The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation

Suppression, China, Oil

What the SCO really stands for

TWO days before the summit, on July 5th, of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, a communiqué issued by China and Russia hailed the regional alliance for its role “in establishing a just and rational new international political and economic order”. Judging from the activities of the member states (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), three principles define that new order: slaking China's thirst for energy, protecting member states as they tyrannise dissidents and curbing America's influence in the region.

Driven by Chinese demand, energy business in the SCO, often nicknamed the “Shanghai Six”, is booming. On his trip to Kazakhstan, China's president, Hu Jintao, opened negotiations on analysing the possibility of a gas pipeline connecting China and Kazakhstan; a similar oil pipeline is due to be completed by December. The SCO invited Iran, India and Pakistan to attend as observers; China hopes to share in the benefits of a proposed pipeline that will bring gas from Iran to India, via Pakistan. At the Astana summit, SCO leaders reaffirmed their interest in strengthening such links.

These ties help explain why the SCO has provided staunch support to Islam Karimov. The Uzbek dictator massacred hundreds of his own citizens in Andijan in May; he also, however, signed a $600m joint energy exploration deal with the Chinese shortly afterwards. But more than the desire to protect investments lies behind the SCO's support of Mr Karimov. Member states are concerned about their own dissidents. Russia applauds Andijan as part of a war against terror because it has long represented its conduct in Chechnya in the same light. China, for its part, has secured much-needed Uzbek and Kazakh co-operation in dealing with its restive Uighurs in Xinjiang province.

On the eve of the summit, therefore, the SCO's secretary-general, Zhang Deguang, defended the massacre as a blow against terrorism and called for enhanced regional security co-operation. “We have not come across a situation,” he said, implicitly responding to western calls for an international investigation, “where we could not tell who was the terrorist and who was the freedom fighter.” The SCO called for “non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states”. That non-interference is used to justify a new extradition agreement, whereby Kirgizstan will return Uzbek refugees wanted by the government in Tashkent. All this sends a clear message: members of the SCO will brutally oppress their citizens, if they feel the need, and the outside world has no right to interfere.

Telling outsiders—meaning, mainly, Americans—not to interfere, however, is only part of it. The SCO wants to rid the region of the American military presence altogether. This week it called for a deadline by which the America-led coalition in Afghanistan should remove its airforce bases in Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan. Ostensibly, the SCO made the call because Afghanistan is becoming more stable. But Russia and China would be keen to fill the vacuum. Chinese researchers have arrived in Uzbekistan to build an “anti-terrorism centre” there, and Russian troops will train with the Uzbek army later this summer. More will probably follow. In time, the SCO's effectiveness may well be harmed by Central Asian resentment at being treated, once more, as the rope in a tug-of-war between Russia and China. But a struggle for the mastery of Central Asia is again unfolding.